chapter five
says, “Take thee a sharp knife, take thee a barber’s razor and cause it to pass upon thy head and upon thy beard.” Pliny states that barbers were common in his time, though only a short time before beards were allowed to grow. He also speaks of spider webs, applied with oil and vinegar to cuts received in barber shops, and also speaks of hones and whetstones for sharpening razors. In the time of Adrian beards were again allowed to grow, and so the changes and fashions went on. In the time of Queen Elizabeth the wearing of beards was controlled by law, and it was ordered that no fellow of Lincoln’s Inn should wear a beard of more than two weeks’ growth. The barber’s brush was introduced in modern times. A writer named Stubb, in a work entitled “Anatomy of Abuses,” published about 1550, in speaking of barbers, wrote, “When they came to washing, oh, how gingerly they behave themselves therein. For then shall your mouths be bossed with the lather or some that runneth off the balls, your eyes closed must be anointed therewith also.” In the very beginning of the last century a poetical wag wrote the following lines showing that at that time the face was clean shaved by barbers.
“Strap that razor so keen! strap that razor again! And Smallpiece will shave em, if he can come at em; From his stool clad in aprons, he springs up amain Like a barber refreshed by the smell of pomatum. From the place where he lay, He leaps in array To lather and shave in the face of the day, He has sworn from pollution our faces to clean Our cheeks, necks and upper lips, whiskers and chin.”
In 1829 a public meeting was held in New York against whiskers, and about the same time there was a movement in Plymouth against them. Barbers and surgeons were incorporated as one company in the fifteenth century, and were called barber surgeons. Henry the Eighth dissolved the union and gave a new charter in 1540, in which it was provided “That no person using any shaving or barbery in London, shall occupy any surgery, letting of blood or other matter, excepting only the drawing of teeth.” Under the law barbers and surgeons were each to use a pole, that of the barber’s, blue and white striped, and that of the surgeon’s, the same, with the addition of a galipot and a red rag. As near as I can learn the use of a pole began as early as the 13th century, when “a staff bound by a riband was held by persons being bled, and the pole was intended to denote the practice of blood letting.” The staff was about three feet long, with a ball on the top and a fillet or tape attached, which when not in use was wound around it. So that the present barber’s pole represents a part of the barber’s business, that of blood letting, which long since passed to the prerogative of the surgeon.
During my youth beards were unknown among Americans, and until 1852 I do not think that a person of any nationality had in my time ever worn a moustache in Plymouth. In the summer of 1854, while occupying for a time the house now occupied by Col. Wm. P. Stoddard, I was confined to the house by illness about three weeks, and during that time permitted my moustache to grow, intending to shave it off before going into the street. When I had recovered sufficiently to go out I took an airing in the carriage of the late Ephraim Finney, having failed to carry out my intention, and my appendage was so roundly condemned by all my friends that I permitted it to grow, and I have never parted with it since. During the next summer a meeting of the descendants of Elder Thomas Cushman, was held in Plymouth, and Rev. Dr. Robert W. Cushman, the orator of the occasion was a guest with his wife at my house. I heard of his saying after he returned home, that he stayed with me while in Plymouth, and then adding—what a pity that a man like Mr. Davis should wear a moustache. I doubt whether there are many older moustaches in Massachusetts than mine.
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